Trump Nominates Pardoned In-Law As Ambassador To France, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That Foreign Postings Were Still Going To People He Was Neither Related To Nor Had Personally Pardoned

The Filing

PALM BEACH, Fla. President-elect Donald J. Trump announced Saturday that he would nominate Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law and a man he pardoned in 2020 for tax evasion, illegal campaign contributions, and witness tampering, to serve as the United States Ambassador to France, resolving a long-standing concern that the nation's most coveted diplomatic posting might go to someone he had neither shared grandchildren with nor personally absolved of federal crimes.

In a statement posted to his social media platform, Trump praised the elder Kushner as "a tremendous business leader, philanthropist, and dealmaker," and said he would represent American interests in Paris with distinction. Transition officials confirmed the selection followed a rigorous process in which the President-elect reviewed every relative whose felonies he had already erased and chose the most available one.

Kushner, the father of Jared Kushner, the President-elect's son-in-law and a senior White House adviser during his first term, pleaded guilty in 2004 to eighteen federal counts. The witness-tampering charge stemmed from his decision to retaliate against a cooperating brother-in-law by hiring a prostitute to record an encounter with him and then mailing the tape to the man's wife, who was Kushner's own sister. The U.S. attorney who secured the conviction, later the governor of New Jersey, has described it as among the most loathsome crimes he prosecuted, a characterization the transition did not dispute and appeared to consider settled.

"The President-elect believes deeply in second chances, particularly for members of his family who have already received a first one in the form of a pardon," said one transition official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the reasoning is circular. "Charlie paid his debt to society the instant the President signed the document erasing it. France is lucky to have him."

The nomination places Kushner in charge of the American embassy in one of the country's oldest allies, a relationship officials noted would now be managed by a man whose principal qualification for the post was being insufficiently estranged from the First Family. Senate Republicans signaled they would move the confirmation swiftly, on the shared understanding that opposing a presidential in-law was a worse career decision than opposing a presidential nominee.

At press time, the President-elect was reported to be reviewing the federal pardon list for additional relatives in need of embassies.

Who Benefits

§Donald J. Trump, who converts the ambassadorship to a centuries-old ally into a family appointment, reinforcing the dynastic logic of an administration already organized around it.
§Charles Kushner, who completes a journey from federal inmate to pardoned felon to chief American diplomat in Paris within the span of two presidential terms.
§Jared Kushner, the President-elect's son-in-law, whose father is installed in a position of prestige while his own investment firm, Affinity Partners, continues to manage billions of dollars from Gulf sovereign wealth funds.
§Ivanka Trump, whose father-in-law is handed an embassy.
§The Kushner family and its real estate and investment businesses, elevated by direct standing in a NATO capital and the prestige that an ambassadorship confers.
§The principle that a pardon is a qualification, advanced from the notion that a crime can be forgiven to the more useful notion that having been forgiven for one is itself a recommendation.
§Future presidents of any party, who inherit the precedent that the diplomatic corps is an acceptable place to house relatives whose records have been cleared by the official doing the appointing.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment